Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by in Bike industry, Marketing | No Comments
The bike industry has its faults but at least we’re not just cranking out ads that gush with empty pontifications about American greatness. Let’s compare the 2011 Jeep and Corvette campaigns to one of my favorite sections in last year’s Zipp catalog.
Posted on 14. Jun, 2010 by in Bike industry, Marketing, Sponsors | 4 Comments
Despite the legend of its namesake, Eddy Merckx Cycles NV is a small company. And if you’re small, you do what you have to do to get attention. But is a shock campaign the right approach? Sort of.
Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by in Bike industry, Marketing | No Comments
There’s a palpable optimism in the bike industry, and much of it is due to a belief in the bicycle as a instrument for positive social change. But in the most ambitious mainstream advertising campaign in the industry’s recent history, that sense of activism is nowhere to be found. Still, the ads are pretty good.
Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by in Marketing, Sponsors | No Comments
When I first went into a six-day race I took a jug of Coca-Cola to New York with me and drank it all the time I was there. I won the championship and came out of that great contest ten pounds heavier than when I went in. After that experience I have never been without Coca-Cola, because it keeps me fresh, but does not stimulate and then leave me all broken up.
Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by in Marketing, Trends | 1 Comment
If someone gave you 5 minutes to inspire a room of 200+ people, what would you say? That was the directive at the Influx Curated conference that I went to yesterday. Ed Cotton – the guy who organized the event, writes the Influx Insights blog, and interviewed me about bikes – picked 10 speakers. Each of them picked two additional speakers. There was a 5-minute time limit and a simple directive: to inspire.
Posted on 04. Jun, 2009 by in Marketing, Sponsors, Trends | 7 Comments
Streetwear and sneaker design tastemaker Jeff Staple has launched a print magazine called Reed Pages (his store/gallery is called Reed Space). It’s a good-looking mag, although visually it doesn’t stand out from the rest of the modern design genre. That said, Reed Pages takes a fresh approach to content where all stories are given equal billing and organized alphabetically. But what’s most interesting about Reed Pages is its approach to advertising. According to Staple, there isn’t any.
Posted on 03. May, 2009 by in Bike industry, Marketing | No Comments
Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ of media posits that “the news” is simply a means by which to put advertising in front of people with buying power. The product is the audience, not the content, and the customers are the advertisers, not the readers. So stories that make people not want to buy stuff or that speak ill of advertisers may be subject to “filtering.” The problem of filtering affects all media but is compounded in cycling, where there’s basically nothing to write about except the products and sponsored athletes of current and potential advertisers.
Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by in Marketing, Trends | 1 Comment
For PR firms – people whose job is to get editorial media coverage, as opposed paid advertising, by sending out press releases and the like – the demise of the newspaper carries with it the demise of one the industry’s most powerful tools: the pass-along rate.
Posted on 07. Jan, 2009 by in Bike industry, Marketing, New Media | 3 Comments
Within the last two days, the world’s #1 sports site and #1 cycling site both launched redesigns. ESPN.com’s was a complete rebuild with entirely new strategies for user experience and advertising options. Cyclingnews, on the other hand, accommodated a new ad display strategy with fairly small code tweak that significantly alters the user experience. A [...]
